15 Successful Women Who Have Spoken Out On Childlessness

This week, NSW's new premier Gladys Berejiklian was asked to explain her childlessness after one hour in the job. Here are some famous women who've lived successful, fulfilling lives without children.
- byErin Rooney

25 Jan
2017

Gladys Berejiklian

She just got appointed Premier of NSW this week, and is the first woman to fill the position. Within one hour of being on the job, Gladys got quizzed about whether she would be able to do the job properly because she's childless.

She responded, "Take me as you see me.”

“Not all of us can plan how our life turns out. I am a very happy person," she continued. "If you asked me 20 years ago would my life look like this? It probably wouldn’t be how it looks like. But I am grateful for the opportunities I have had”

“I also want to say again, not because I have to but because I want to, the closest people in my life are my family. I am not going to judge anybody on their personal circumstances. I am here to govern.”

Helen Mirren

“I have no maternal instinct whatsoever,” Helen Mirren has said. “Motherhood holds no interest for me.”

Oprah Winfrey

"If I had kids, my kids would hate me..." Oprah told The Hollywood Reporter in 2013. They would have ended up on the equivalent of the Oprah show talking about me; because something [in my life] would have had to suffer and it would've probably been them."

Betty White

In an interview with CBS in 2011, Betty said, "No, I've never regretted it. I'm so compulsive about stuff. I know that if I had ever gotten pregnant, of course, that would've been my whole focus. But I didn't choose to have children because I'm focused on my career and I don't think as compulsive as I am that I could manage both."

Jennifer Aniston

Jennifer Aniston famously wrote a powerful essay about how women are treated in the media and her multiple 'fake pregnancy' rumours, and wrote "We don’t need to be married or mothers to be complete. We get to determine our own “happily ever after” for ourselves."

Zooey Deschanel

When asked if having children was on her priority list, Zooey told Marie Claire US, "I'm not going to answer that question. I'm not mad at you for asking that question, but I've said it before: I don't think people ask men those questions.”

Cameron Diaz

In 2014, Cameron Diaz told Esquire, "I like protecting people, but I was never drawn to being a mother. I have it much easier than any of them. That's just what it is. Doesn't mean life isn't sometimes hard. I'm just what I am. I work on what I am. Right now, I think, things are good for me. I've done a lot. And I don't care anymore."

Kim Cattrall

The Sex and the City star told The Advocate 2008, "I'm a woman of a certain age who doesn't have kids and never really settled down ... I enjoy kids but not for long periods. I think they're adorable and funny and sweet, and then I have a headache."

Chelsea Chandler

“I’m sitting here in my spacious home with no children. I’m having a cocktail at 10am, going over some paperwork,” the TV host previously said in her show, Chelsea.

Renee Zellweger

"Motherhood has never been an ambition. I don't think like that. I never have expectations like 'when I'm 19 I'm going to do this, and by the time I've hit 25 I'm going to do that'. I just take things as they come, each day at a time," she told New York Daily News in 2008.

Ellen Degeneres

Ellen told People of her and wife Portia de Rossi, "Honestly, we'd probably be great parents. But it's a human being, and unless you think you have excellent skills and have a drive or yearning in you to do that, the amount of work that that is and responsibility—I wouldn't want to screw them up! We love our animals."

Julia Gillard

Australia's first female Prime Minister has had to face torrents of criticism over the years for not having children. She gave a speech on misogyny directed at Tony Abbott in parliament and spoke for many of the women of Australia.

Julie Bishop

The Minister for Foreign Affairs said in an interview “I feel incredibly lucky that I’ve had the kind of career that is so consuming that I don’t feel I have a void in my life.”

Winona Ryder

“I’m getting asked a lot, ‘You don’t have kids, so how do you know how to act like a mother?’” she told New York Times about her role in Netflix's Stranger Things.

Gloria Steinem

"I'm completely happy not having children. I mean, everybody does not have to live in the same way. And as somebody said, 'Everybody with a womb doesn't have to have a child any more than everybody with vocal cords has to be an opera singer," she said on Chelsea Lately,